How the West Was Won

How the West Was Won is an epic western on a grand scale. By that I mean that a great array of stars and skilled filmmakers are behind the film, and that it was released in the super-widescreen Cinerama format. The whole thing falls rather flat, though, when you consider what came out of it. The film tries to tell the story of the West, from the time the first settlers headed west until the West became an integral part of the USA. How the West Was Won superficially follows the Prescott family's two pretty daughters, Eve and Lilith, and their fate in the new land, but the film contains a dreadful number of more or less interesting subplots that simply make the film longer and longer.

When I watched the film, I noticed two vertical stripes a third of the way in from each side. According to Halliwell, these are traces of Cinerama, which can be seen on the CinemaScope print. It is incredible that it has not been possible to remove them.